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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22611904">complicated</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawasawako/pseuds/sawasawako'>sawasawako</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, percabeth angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:47:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22611904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawasawako/pseuds/sawasawako</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>some classic post-tartarus angst / a rumination on the nature of percy and annabeth's relationship</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>complicated</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Tartarus, things were never the same. </p>
<p>Percy and Annabeth have never had it easy––their relationship had been potholed with stumbling blocks and barricades, and whatever calm seas they managed to find after the first major battle of their lives was taken away by a vengeful goddess.</p>
<p>Mortals say the universe plots to bring together people who are meant to be, but that is a naïve view of life. Demigods know the uglier truth: the universe is governed by capricious gods, and there is an inherent intractability to life that may never truly be overcome. Sometimes, the universe actively conspires against you. </p>
<p>Maybe it would be easier if Percy and Annabeth weren’t so different, at their core. </p>
<p>There are times when Annabeth thinks, cynically, that their differences ultimately make them incompatible, and they’re better off keeping each other at arm’s length. Going through literal hell has really amplified those feelings of insecurity, giving them a clarity that was less needed back when things were still normal.</p>
<p>Now that grim clarity was necessary, for both of their sanities.</p>
<p>And the worse thing is, Annabeth knows Percy doesn’t think this way. </p>
<p>She is riddled with contradictions, while he is smooth as a body of water. She is the uneven sand and detritus that line the shore, while he is the strong, unbroken tides. She grew up in wilderness and inconstancy, while he grew up in the envelopment of a mother’s love. </p>
<p>He has his share of darkness, too, as all demigods do, but there is a fundamental unruliness to Annabeth that makes her volatile, ungovernable. </p>
<p>It frustrates her endlessly that her emotions seem to follow no sensible logic of the universe, obeying only laws of their own. Her interior reflects the external environment she grew up in––coarse, unrefined, disorderly. She compensates by focusing on her erudition, on brains and brawns and not the fragile, nebulous stuff that is her feelings. </p>
<p>Percy is different. </p>
<p>Percy is a warm ocean breeze, sunlight finding its way through cracks and nooks and crannies. Percy can navigate emotions like he can navigate the sea, coolly and instinctively. Percy has never had an emotional crisis in his life, while Annabeth has a few every week. Percy is unruffled; Annabeth is seemingly always on the brink of an outburst, or a meltdown.</p>
<p>The reason they repel each other is the same reason they gravitate towards each other, intertwined in the paradoxical logic of “opposites attract.” </p>
<p>Still. It would be easier if their poles were less opposed. </p>
<p>When Percy says, “Our relationship is the most important thing in my life,” Annabeth feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. </p>
<p>Or maybe it’s just the weight of their relationship––she can’t tell the difference anymore.</p>
<p>It is true that relationships aren’t everything in life, but humans are wired for connection, and Annabeth is no exception, no matter how much she tries to convince herself she is.</p>
<p>“Percy,” she says, almost breathless, and watches as his gaze drifts up to meet hers. There is that earnestness again, the sincerity that is always just a few steps behind the cheekiness, the snark that co-exists with magnanimity. </p>
<p>In that brief moment, Annabeth realises that, in his own way, Percy is full of contradictions, too––just less acute ones.</p>
<p>The silence that elapses is achingly imperfect, filled with unspoken wounds and swallowed confessions and the banality of pain, but it is a shared silence that bears the bruises and battle scars of their relationship, a silence that belongs to them. That fact alone is meaningful and strangely comforting in a world where the personal is beholden to the public goings-on, and the public goings-on is dictated by forces perversely outside of one’s control. </p>
<p>In the end, maybe life is about the right to choose a different ending, to have ownership and control over your own pain. Maybe it's about learning to heal in the discomfort, to see the truth in the contradictions.</p>
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